By Nici Holt Cline
We love pancakes in our house. Andy is a purist: plain fluffy cakes made from scratch with white flour. I experiment with cornmeal johnnycakes and multi-grain flapjacks. They are sometimes topped with peanut butter, homemade applesauce or whole milk blueberry yogurt. They are always topped with Grade A maple syrup and salted organic butter.
When we were 19 we fell in love over pancakes in Andy’s mom’s kitchen. In Jackson, Wyoming, when we were 22, we ate pancakes on the floor of our tiny apartment with the only two forks we owned on the only two plates we owned on a blanket on the floor. We shared pancakes while camping across the country, through five different rentals in college and, now, we eat pancakes on our table in our home with our kids.
For 13 years Andy and I have always cherished and made time for slow weekend breakfasts together. Since parenthood, we maintain that need but it is, of course, different with syrup clinging to my curls, yogurt painted across the table, sticky fingers touching everything, potty breaks and bouncing an infant between bites.
Sometime since December 2007, the soft Sunday mornings with fresh, hot coffee and fresh, hot pancakes, NPR lulling us into conversations about last week and next gave way to lively Sunday mornings with coffee that has been reheated seven times, Andy at the stove flipping cakes, balancing a baby on his shoulder, me asking Margot for the 127th time to please not stand on the table and The Hamster Dance twirling us into our day.
I haven’t had a warm pancake in two years.
A mother’s pancake is served hot but eaten cold. It is initially fresh and fluffy but in need of flavor. She applies sugary syrup and creamy butter that float on the surface and the intention for an immediate, perfect bite exists, a bite before the condiments absorb. A bite like the bites before children. But one daughter needs my own pancake cut up please mama and one daughter needs to nurse. And so she tends to her children, loses that moment only to return, many minutes later, to a soggy, cold cake. But the thing is that she is now that much more hungry and that much more appreciative of the flavors. A mother’s pancake is saturated and it waits for her. It’s delicious, the bites a different kind of perfect. Much better than she thought it could ever be.
Nici Holt Cline is a fourth generation Montanan working on raising a fifth. You can read “Mama Digs” every Monday exclusively at www.mamalode.com. Nici also writes regularly at dig this chick, a blog about gardening with Montana, growing with two wondrous kids, cooking with impulsive whimsy, sewing with naive courage and some other important observations. Read more of Nici’s mamalode articles here
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So true…mama’s pancakes are always cold…..the things we do for our children we do not do for anyone else…even ourselves. Wouldn’t change that for the world!
[...] the loss of my ability to get through a meal with a reasonable amount of peace. Since reading A Mother’s Pancake, I’ve been able to look at the mayhem of mealtime with fresh [...]
Your stories are so well told. Sometimes, eating while standing at the stove is the only way you can get yourself a fresh meal.